Monday, December 31, 2012

Hello friends! Hope you all are doing fine. Today is my year end post and I want to wish each and everyone of you a very happy new year ahead. I also want to thank you all for being there, supporting me and bearing my tantrums too and helping me out in time of need. So as a big thank you to all of you out there without whom this blog would not have progressed I share with you a cake which I finally seemed to have got it right. My recipe source is my blogger friend Kavi from foodomania and the help I also got from my friends with regards to icing on the cake. Let me share with you what happened once I made this cake. I wanted to bake this for my little 9yr old niece and wanted it to be real good. The icing work is bit shoddy but my cake came out the way I was hoping it would come out.Ingredients for cake:

1 cup Maida/APF

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup powdered sugar ( adjust to taste)

1/2 cup curd

1/2 tsp baking soda

1tsp baking powder

1/4 cup oil

1 tsp vanilla essence

a pinch of salt.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 160 degree C. ( oven settings may vary)Grease and line your baking pan.Add sugar to the curd and mix well to form smooth mixture.To the curd mixture, add baking powder, baking soda and salt.Beat the mixture till you see tiny bubbles in the curd.Let it rest for 5mins till more bubbles appear.Sieve the flour and cocoa twice.Now add oil and vanilla to curd mixture and mix well againAdd flour 1 spoon at time in the curd mixture. Keep mixing and stirring till all the flour is in curd mix.The batter should not be too thick or thin. ( if thin add one more spoon of flour and if thick add few drops of milk or water)Pour the batter in the baking pan. Gently tap it to smoothen it. Cover the pan with aluminium foil and once the oven has reached required temperature put the pan in oven. Bake the cake for aprox 35-40 mins. Or till a tooth pick inserted in center comes out clean.I always had problems at this stage so I kept the pan covered with foil for 30mins and later removed the foil to let it bake and nice crust forming on top. This way my cake was done perfectly well. Trial and error I guess.Remove the pan from oven and let it cool. I cooled this cake for a longer time and by the time I was ready to eat it was perfectly set.Once its cool invert and set it straight. For this cake I removed the butter paper but I found the cake bottom sticking to the plate so for my next cake I left the butter paper intact.The chocolate cake is ready but if you want icing here is the next step.The cake should cool enough for icing to set.For icing:( these measurements are on guess work so kindly adjust as per your need)

3tbsp unsalted butter

1/4 cup icing sugar

few drops of milk

1tsp vanilla essence ( use which ever flavour you prefer)

Method:

Keep the butter at room temperature. Mix butter and sugar well and add milk and essence as per need to get smooth consistency. Spread on cake with a butter knife and decorate it as per your liking. The end pic I had added gems candies later as my cake was ready and no one was waiting so I had to decorate with candies later and take pic. This cake got finished in a day. So I made another one next day but plain vanilla sponge cake. Just skip the cocoa powder in above cake ingredients and voila your vanilla cake is ready.Hope you like this and my icing was bit shoddy but I would pick up soon when I make cake next time.

The first look of the cake

The shoddy look of butter cream icing

The side look of icing

Half eaten cake with gems

The plain vanilla sponge cake made next day

Got the perfect look and texture

Yummy!!!!

Enjoy the cake and I am so delighted with my attempts that the look I got from my family was worth making the two cakes. I would still learn to do the icing correct now that I finally got my cake good. Happy new year to all of you.

Thank you for your valuable comments. Each of your comments keeps me motivated to write more.However,please leave your name when you comment as anonymous commentator would remain anonymous and chances are that comment may not be published :)Thank you so much.